Skill of the Week: Improve Your Guitar Skills

Starting on Wednesday, March 22nd at 6pm Eastern

Starting March 22nd, 2017 and live each Wednesday at 6pm EST for the following 10 weeks. Archives will be available within a few hours of the conclusion of each course. This course will show you just how amazing the acoustic guitar can truly be.

This course goes out to everyone that feels stuck in a rut and just wants to improve. Each week we will take a look at a highly-desired skill and work towards getting just a little bit better at it. Strumming, alternate picking, soloing and even the best method to learn songs; we cover it all. Each lesson includes fun exercises, a useful lesson, sweet tracks to jam along with, as well as a full guided practice routine.

Get access to this live course with a full JamPlay Membership, which includes access to all past live courses and over 5,400 on-demand lessons.
This also includes all teaching tools, chord and scale libraries, along with gear giveaways, teacher reviews, and daily live lessons.

About our Live Courses

We have upgraded, revamped, and organized in-studio, live weekly workshops broadcasted in 1080p. These focused, task-based workshops include full tablature, interactivity with the instruction, and even homework each week. We are bringing live, educational instruction into the next generation with this platform.

In 2016, we completely re-engineered our recording studio with top of the line gear, including a full suite of 4k cameras complimented by a new audio outfit. The result is beautiful live streams to your computer, in qualities as high as 1080p!

Each live course is supplemented with full tablature, music notation, and even backing tracks. Our live lessons are focused, planned, and even give you homework options on how to improve and look forward to the following week.

Our staff fields questions from the audience throughout each section, and opens the "classroom" up for questions throughout each course. You also have the ability to call in live with your own video stream!

Our live platform has been a major focus over the past 18 months, and we are very excited to fully unleash it's capability! Attend any of these courses with a full JamPlay subscription
and get the benefit of full interaction with our instructors in a focused, planned course. We even have the ability to field your questions with live video call in!

Full Course Schedule

View the full course schedule below. And of course, we keep everything, so if you miss a week you can always watch our archive of live courses. Tabs, backing tracks, and a full course PDF are provided for students, along with homework for each week! Interact with other students along with the instructor
and get the instruction you need to advance your playing.

Date

Topic

Session 1

Strumming

What is the one thing people want to accomplish when strumming along to their favorite song or doing an "unplugged" performance? They want to sound natural! You can learn strum patterns until you're blue in the face and you’ll never get anywhere until you embrace a key concept of rhythm playing! We’ll introduce it and practice it in this session.

Session 2

Alternate Picking

How do you increase speed while still playing cleanly? How do you guard against tensing up while practicing? How do you retain a musical feel at all speeds? We will answer all of these questions in this session! It’s not as hard as you might think.

Session 3

Learning Songs

We all want to be able to figure stuff out by ear without having to spend endless time on the internet looking for poor quality tabs or inaccurate YouTube videos. You can forever ask guitar teachers how to play specific songs, or you can learn and apply this simple ear training exercise to help you teach any song to yourself!

Session 4

Bending

It has been said that bending, more than any other guitar technique, defines the way a player sounds; it is a key aspect of great phrasing. You’ll learn how to make your bends sound natural and in tune all the time. You’ll learn how to approach different types of bends for different emotional effects. You’ll also learn several key rules regarding practicing your bending.

Session 5

Sliding

Sliding really stumps some players. It can be difficult to slide just the right number of frets with just the right pressure and in just the right timing. We’ll break down these stumbling blocks of sliding and show you how to practice for maximum efficiency!

Session 6

Hammer-Ons and Pull-Offs

There’s lots of ways to work on these techniques. You’ve probably worked on drills before that tire your arm out and make you want to ice your lower back. In this session, we’re going to focus on a musical sequence that incorporates strategic picking with tasteful legato playing. We’ll practice at different speeds and apply real-world ways of using both hands to generate some cool sounds!

Session 7

Barre Chords

We can all get a little better at these suckers! It doesn’t matter if you’ve been playing for ages or you’re brand new; barre chords are tough! We will review key posture and hand position best practices and then focus on gaining stamina to prepare for that song that’s got you playing non-stop, hand-cramping barre chords.

Session 8

Soloing

What does it mean to “get a little better at soloing”? It means learning how to make your guitar sound more like a voice. We’ll get you over the hump of recycling licks and scales to tips on developing meaningful hooks and melodies in your solos.

Session 9

Grooving

Strumming is a subset of grooving, though many players don’t think of it that way. Grooving is a broader skill and yet requires more specific attention paid to it. We will deal a bit more with strumming in this session, but we’ll really start to look at how to play “around the beat” using strums, and single note riffs as well.

Session 10

Finding Your Style

You know what music you like, and you know what music you like to play, but how do you go about finding your niche as a player? How do you create your own, unique sound? A sound that is pleasing to listen to for you and others. We’ll discuss practicing techniques and ways of thinking about your playing that will help you bring your playing from your practice room to a real stage.